I’m writing this in mid-February 2025, as I watch all sorts of political goings-on (to put it mildly) in the US, and the widespread frustration of folks towards our political leadership.
Why aren’t they doing something? Or: why aren’t they doing things better?
I will not argue that their response is lackluster, and/or a dereliction of their role as public servants, depending on the specific situation(s) or people.
However, it does poke at something that has been on my mind for a long time, and that I have seen play out in so many places:
- Leadership in a given party, or company, or organization is lackluster or seemingly apathetic.
- Social clubs are run by people who could… stand to have more social skills.
- Online communities are run by mods who are absent, or unfair, or biased.
- Local businesses are poorly run, or unreliable, or don’t have enough vegan/GF/local/whatever options.
- Friend or family get-togethers rarely, if ever, happen.
Everyone wants someone to do better, or different, or whatever, and waits. And we all end up scrolling angrily or at least unfulfilledly through our preferred social media platforms, looking for signs of something better, or simply getting angry at the lack of improvement.
Yes, it would be great if our leaders were better at leading. It would be good if social groups were run by the most socially capable and conscientious among us. It would be nice if my favorite local restaurants didn’t randomly close for the day (or permanently) without notice! It would be nice if workplaces were more fair, if our friends were less flaky, and on and on.
But after a certain point, there’s no point in waiting. Especially if there is no evidence to support that things will magically rebound on their own. There’s no point in hoping things will get better of their own accord, without input from us, while we just scroll in anger. Without actual, constructive action.
Note: I hope it does not need to be said, but I am not advocating for violence or illegal behavior. I am advocating for building the society we want to have, in a positive and idealistic sense. And I am not limiting this to politics. In fact, I think it would be better if we start in a non-political way to build social connections back up.
The truth is that a large part of our society–not just in politics–is led by people trying their best. And I hate to let my Midwestern politeness slip here, but oftentimes their best is not enough.
What I’m proposing: if things suck, build something better. If you don’t have enough knowledge or confidence to build something better, join someone else who does, and then work from there.
“I could do better” (…does nothing)
At a past job, we were lucky enough to have a number of restaurant options within walking distance, though one restaurant in particular got quite a bit of patronage because it was affordable and one of the fastest ones to get to. And the food was pretty good too.
And yet: we would all bitch all the time about the slowness of service. You could watch them prepare your order as you stood in line, and it was infuriatingly inefficient.
All of us believed, deep in our bones, that we could do better… and never did.
I still believe (to this day!) that any one of us could have significantly improved the throughput of that restaurant, however much hubris there is in that claim. But we were all stuck with its level of service none of us cared to do better. And life is quite a bit like that, imho.
The Serenity Prayer
You might be thinking “I can’t fix every last shitty thing in the world”, and you’d be right.
But you can pick what you are willing to try to change, and what is not worth your time. AKA, the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
This is not just useful for religious people. It’s a way of deciding what you want to put your energy towards (something that is in increasingly limited supply for some!), because impotent rage towards everything just wears you out.
As much as I complained about that restaurant, it was not worth it to me (or apparently anyone else) to do better, either by starting our own restaurant, or by finding a way to tactfully make suggestions. Or just by going somewhere else. We all just bitched about it amongst ourselves, and as a result, nothing changed, so we were all less happy when going there, while still having slow service.
But back to the Serenity Prayer: as social media eats into our lives, as social support structures start to fall apart, as we are faced with a number of compounding crises, and as life just feels “not quite as good anymore”, there have to be some things that we still think are worth changing or improving.
So what are we going to do about it?
A New Lens
I hate to sound like one of those cheesy internet gurus, but truly: of the most fundamental changes in how I see the world happened after I made the switch to self-employment.
Suddenly, I was in charge of everything: the ‘actual’ work, but also accounting, admin tasks, marketing, and most importantly, sales.
It quickly became apparent to me just how much of the business world is, let’s say, vibes-based.
Here I was, sending in proposals for things I felt fully qualified for. I was giving educational talks to demonstrate my knowledge on a given topic, giving away my expertise to potential customers, volunteering, the whole nine yards. I’m not mad that I did any of those things and didn’t shoot for the moon (in a way I felt uncomfortable with); I already have more work than I can handle. And, I want to eventually put myself out of business. I work in cybersecurity and the goal should be to increase the security of computer systems such that we aren’t constantly putting out fires, rather than just showing up after the wreckage has already happened. But I digress.
Let me tell you about some of the other situations I ran into.
I have been on calls with companies who wanted to (secretly) rent out my time to a customer on a topic I know, but that they do not. Nothing too crazy there, plenty of folks hire for expertise they don’t have in-house. But the catch was that I would do all the work, and they would present it as the experts, and use it to build up their reputation in the field, rather than bring me (or anyone else) in-house, or otherwise build up that knowledge.
I once helped hire a guy who left shortly afterward and became a “[industry] career expert”, attributing his success to his methods, which he was happy to sell you, rather than the personal pitch I made to upper management on his behalf.
Another time, someone stole all of my CompTIA blog posts (from this blog) and started selling them as an ebook.
To avoid giving too many more work details, let me instead tell you about how I’ve seen this dynamic play out elsewhere:
- I know multiple people who have taken a seminar (for example, on a type of fitness class) and shortly after started their own company, positioning themselves as an expert for something they had maybe 10 business days of training on. To be fair, they ended up hitting it out of the park.
- I know rec leagues, volunteer organizations, and non-profits organized by people who did not start out as experts in any sense. Some of them ended up the de facto leader by accident, because they were the most organized out of the original group, or pulled the short straw. I know a few non-profit leaders who started in their teens, before anyone could convince them they were unqualified (and they did a great job, too!)
- I know several people who have started successful, multi-million dollar agencies entirely based on information they learned on Youtube.
- I know multiple people who started (and still have) large-scale hydroponic food farms, or other food companies, unhappy with the quality of food they found elsewhere.
I do not intend for all of the above examples to be taken in a negative light. We all know people who have successfully yolo’d their way into a brand new life, and we all know people who are wildly incompetent yet somehow succeeding anyway. This list contains a bit of both, though mostly the former.
Note: there are obvious exceptions to the “you can just do things” examples listed above: doctors, lawyers, nuclear experts, foreign language translators, epidemiologists, etc. Some things you truly cannot fake, and/or end up in heaps of trouble if you attempt to do so.
My point is that in a wide swath of society is led by people who are no more talented or intelligent or even more qualified than you. They are just ballsier, or more open, or take more initiative. They have the courage to change the things they want to change, sometimes regardless of their qualifications.
I know that all of this can sound incredibly negative, but I sincerely do not mean it that way. Life is an open player game, and if you see something that you think sucks, and where you can do better, you have the opportunity to not only improve your life but also your community by stepping up and trying your hand at it.
I had the magic of growing up watching my grandparents find community causes (the need for AEDs in public spaces, care for veterans, etc) and make solutions (fundraisers, non-profit events, etc) appear as though out of thin air. My life and my community is immeasurably better for the countless hours of volunteering they put in, and feels so much emptier in their absence.
Individuals or Community
To be clear, this is not a call for purely individual action.
The people I see frustrated at lackluster leadership are often already taking individual actions in line with their beliefs: they are environmentalists, or support the arts, or vote, etc.
And they (correctly) recognize that for many problems, individual action can only get us so far. For the biggest challenges in our communities, industries, society, we need coordinated efforts.
But that action does have to start with an individual, before it snowballs into something bigger.
Some Stats, Since I’m an Engineer
While the exact percentages quoted here are said to be “evolving” (whatever that means), there’s a study from researcher Jakob Nielsen that says:
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
See also: the 1% rule.
Anecdotally, this feels true for online communities. I think it’s also true for in-person communities too.
Put this way, you can see how much of an influence a tiny percentage of people have on the rest of us.
And this can be used for good (or bad) purposes. A few online groups that I’m in are started by some incredibly conscientious, caring people, and the community they formed has taken on the properties of the founder: valuing civic participation, or mentoring, or open dialogue.
Of course, there’s plenty of bad too. Unqualified people trying to quack-medicine their way to health, or people who use their position of power to bully others (if only within an HOA).
Agency cuts both ways, and by not offering something better, you are letting the bad actors in that 1% maliciously influence the community at large.
Managing social groups is not without its challenges, but it sure as hell beats screaming into the void about how social norms are slipping away. You could be living out those social norms and getting other people to do it with you!
Not to mention that, as you can see online and in person, people are hungry for better leadership. That could be you!
Obligatory Imposter Syndrome Mention
Some folks, despite being bitterly unhappy with the state of things, still feel that they are unqualified to start something.
I understand that, and in fact I appreciate it in cases where unqualified people are leading things they have no business leading. I did, after all, just spend a hundred words or so complaining about salespeople who are willing to falsely present someone else’s expertise as their own.
But there is a big range of things between “do nothing except rage-post online” and “get way in over your head, duplicate efforts, or straight-up deceive people”.
If you are truly unqualified for something you have your heart set on (let’s say, political organizing, or complicated non-profit services), you can start by joining an existing organization and getting experience. There are hundreds if not thousands of groups who need volunteers, and some groups that may even have paid positions. If no such organizations exist around you, you can sometimes find groups online, or reach out to people in other cities who have done what you are trying to do.
You can also start with small things with people you already know. You can organize small get-togethers that build social connections and maybe even work towards a bigger goal:
- Get an activity out of the group chat and into reality, even if it’s a “passive” event like getting dinner or going to a sports game
- Plan a litter pickup with your friends (before/after something else fun like coffee)
- Host a chill get-together at your place or backyard. A dinner party if you’re ambitious, but maybe everyone just brings a craft project over and co-works during an open afternoon.
- Talk to a local non-profit, like a dog shelter, and hit up your social groups for items they need (and that people want to donate anyway).
- Eternally stuck doing Millennial Tech Support? Write up some common questions (e.g. why password managers are a good idea) and distribute it.
…Then Do Better
Eventually, you can start building to something bigger. Pull a Jen Dzuira and organize an event (brunch, conference, etc). Run for a local school board. Accidentally end up as the de facto leader of a wildfire relief network. Introduce people to one another and be a connector. Organize a memorial for the deceased who have no one left to bury them. Provide people with the skills to host more. Yolo start your own bakery. Teach the less-tech-savvy people in your life digital privacy. Turn your artwork into a million dollar benefit for Ukraine. Mentor and support young people who would otherwise fall into online extremism. Start a non-profit, or a sport league, or a company. Don’t just look around and despair, but build something that is demonstrably better than the shitty alternatives around you. The competition has never been lower, and the stakes have never been higher.
I’ll stop with the ideas before I venture too far into Trainspotting manifesto territory, but let me just leave you with this: at the risk of sounding like some sigma grindset bro, the world is built by people who do things.
And if you care enough to get mad about this stuff, you can be the person planning, and making things happen, within your own world, and eventually the world at large. Make it so. : )